Control and Surrender

August 09, 2006

When you think of control and surrender, temptation may urge you to change the and to a versus. Our common sense tells us both conditions cannot co-exist. Yet when we look at life outside of our experiences and embrace all possibilities, we realize that at times control and surrender not only appear side by side, but they function symbiotically, if not in unison.

We spend our days and nights struggling with the illusion of control over every aspect in our lives. We make decisions, using our free will, to direct the course of our lives to bring in that which we visualize, desire, strive for. We control our lives down to minutia and ponder the greater impact each act exerts over our lives in general.

We consume our thoughts with controlling every angle of our behavior and our decisions and we delude ourselves into thinking we actually had a hand in our outcomes. In fact, the illusion controls us and not the other way around. Since the obsession with control pervades our thoughts, this yearning for control ends up being the master of our existence and if we reach some level of enlightenment, we understand we control nothing - even our sense of control.

Elaborate decision-making processes discussed by thousands of professionals, attempt to instruct us in the higher calling of sound objective thinking. We analyze, scrutinize, compartmentalize and more to justify our emotional decision to the point where only the skeleton of the problem and the solution hang in our closet of self-doubt.

Surrender steps in when all our control finally fails to produce our desired result and we exhaust our resources and resilience for maintaining control. Like forgiveness, surrender doesn't equate to saying "yes" to detrimental circumstances or behavior, surrender merely allows the flow of the universe to manifest in the situation and the greater good.

Throwing our figurative hands in the air, surrender of a situation to the Infinite frees us from the bonds of control and the slavery to our thinking. Letting go, giving up, releasing ownership of the formulation and culmination of a situation provides you with unprecedented peace knowing that you are separated from the expected outcome because you didn't control it in the first place.

How do we reconcile "doing our best" and "trying our hardest" with giving it all up in surrender? We need to separate the ideas of surrender and inaction. Hold dear the process of doing everything you can do, and give up the outcome to Spirit. We rarely control outcomes anyway, why not find peace in the process?

In taking control and truly surrendering to the Infinite, I wish you peace of mind, a restful spirit and a grateful heart.